Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “I gave them a lecture and showed them I’d lost my arm defending them from the Germans, and they went quiet—until a few days ago, when half a dozen local men returned from service in the army. They claimed to have been discharged, but I’m sure they’ve deserted. Impossible to check, unfortunately.”

  Fitz nodded. The Kerensky Offensive had been a failure, and the Germans and Austrians had counterattacked. The Russians had fallen to pieces, and the Germans were now heading for Petrograd. Thousands of Russian soldiers had walked away from the battlefield and returned to their villages.

  “They brought their rifles with them, and pistols they must have stolen from officers, or taken from German prisoners. Anyway, they’re heavily armed, and full of subversive ideas. There’s a corporal, Feodor Igorovich, who seems to be the ringleader. He told Georgi he did not understand why I was still claiming any land at all, let alone the fallow.”

  “I don’t understand what happens to men in the army,” said Fitz with exasperation. “You’d think it would teach them the value of authority and discipline—but it seems to do the opposite.”

  “I’m afraid things came to a head this morning,” Andrei went on. “Corporal Feodor’s younger brother, Ivan Igorovich, put his cattle to graze in my pasture. Georgi found out, and he and I went to remonstrate with Ivan. We started to turn his cattle out into the lane. He tried to close the gate to prevent us. I was carrying a shotgun, and I gave him a clout across the head with the butt end of it. Most of these damn peasants have heads like cannonballs, but this one was different, and the wretch fell down and died. The socialists are using that as an excuse to get everyone agitated.”

  Fitz politely concealed his distaste. He disapproved of the Russian practise of striking one’s inferiors, and he was not surprised when it led to this kind of unrest. “Have you told anyone?”

  “I sent a message to the town, reporting the death and asking for a detachment of police or troops to keep order, but my messenger hasn’t returned yet.”

  “So for now, we’re on our own.”

  “Yes. If things get any worse, I’m afraid we may have to send the ladies away.”

  Fitz was devastated. This was much worse than he had anticipated. They could all be killed. Coming here had been a dreadful mistake. He had to get Bea away as soon as possible.

  He stood up. Conscious that Englishmen sometimes boasted to foreigners about their coolness in a crisis, he said: “I’d better go and change for dinner.”

  Andrei showed him up to his room. Jenkins had unpacked his evening clothes and pressed them. Fitz began to undress. He felt a fool. He had put Bea and himself into danger. He had gained a useful impression of the state of affairs in Russia, but the report he would write was hardly worth the risk he had taken. He had let himself be talked into it by his wife, and that was always a mistake. He resolved they would catch the first train in the morning.

  His revolver was on the dresser with his cuff links. He checked the action, then broke it open and loaded it with .455 Webley cartridges. There was nowhere to put it in a dress suit. In the end he stuffed it into his trousers pocket, where it made an unsightly bulge.

  He summoned Jenkins to put away his traveling clothes, then stepped into Bea’s room. She stood at the mirror in her underwear, trying on a necklace. She looked more voluptuous than usual, her breasts and hips a little heavier, and Fitz suddenly wondered whether she might be pregnant. She had suffered an attack of nausea this morning in Moscow, he recalled, in the car going to the railway station. He was reminded of her first pregnancy, and that took him back to a time he now thought of as a golden moment, when he had Ethel and Bea, and there was no war.

  He was about to tell her that they had to leave tomorrow when he glanced out of the window and stopped short.

  The room was at the front of the house and had a view over the park and the fields beyond to the nearest village. What had caught Fitz’s eye was a crowd of people. With deep foreboding he went to the window and peered across the grounds.

  He saw a hundred or so peasants approaching the house across the park. Although it was still daylight, many carried blazing torches. Some, he saw, had rifles.

  He said: “Oh, fuck.”

  Bea was shocked. “Fitz! Have you forgotten that I am here?”

  “Look at this,” he said.

  Bea gasped. “Oh, no!”

  Fitz shouted: “Jenkins! Jenkins, are you there?” He opened the communicating door and saw the valet, looking startled, putting the traveling suit on a hanger. “We’re in mortal danger,” Fitz said. “We have to leave in the next five minutes. Run to the stables, put the horses to a carriage, and bring it to the kitchen door as fast as you can.”

  Jenkins dropped the suit on the floor and dashed off.

  Fitz turned to Bea. “Throw on a coat, any coat, and pick up a pair of sensible outdoor shoes, then go down the back stairs to the kitchen and wait for me there.”

  To her credit, there were no hysterics: she just did as she was told.

  Fitz left the room and hurried, limping as fast as he could, to Andrei’s bedroom. His brother-in-law was not there, nor was Valeriya.

  Fitz went downstairs. Georgi and some of the male servants were in the hall, looking frightened. Fitz was scared too, but he hoped he was not showing it.

  Fitz found the prince and princess in the drawing room. There was an opened bottle of champagne on ice, and two glasses had been poured, but they were not drinking. Andrei stood in front of the fireplace and Valeriya was at the window, looking at the approaching crowd. Fitz stood beside her. The peasants were almost at the door. A few had firearms; most carried knives, hammers, and scythes.

  Andrei said: “Georgi will attempt to reason with them, and if that fails I shall have to speak to them myself.”

  Fitz said: “For God’s sake, Andrei, the time for talking is past. We have to leave now.”

  Before Andrei could reply, they heard raised voices in the hall.

  Fitz went to the door and opened it a crack. He saw Georgi arguing with a tall young peasant who had a bushy mustache that stretched across his cheeks: Feodor Igorovich, he guessed. They were surrounded by men and a few women, some holding burning torches. More were pushing in through the front door. It was hard to understand their local accent, but one shouted phrase was repeated several times: “We will speak to the prince!”

  Andrei heard it too, and he stepped past Fitz and out into the hall. Fitz said: “No—” but it was too late.

  The mob jeered and hissed when Andrei appeared in evening dress. Raising his voice, he said: “If you all leave quietly now, perhaps you won’t be in such bad trouble.”

  Feodor shot back: “You’re the one in trouble—you murdered my brother!”

  Fitz heard Valeriya say quietly: “My place is beside my husband.” Before he could stop her she, too, had gone into the hall.

  Andrei said: “I didn’t intend Ivan to die, but he would be alive now if he had not broken the law and defied his prince!”

  With a sudden quick movement, Feodor reversed his rifle and hit Andrei across the face with its butt.

  Andrei staggered back, holding a hand to his cheek.

  The peasants cheered.

  Feodor shouted: “This is what you did to Ivan!”

  Fitz reached for his revolver.

  Feodor raised his rifle above his head. For a frozen moment the long Mosin-Nagant hovered in the air like an executioner’s axe. Then he brought the rifle down, with a powerful blow, and hit the top of Andrei’s head. There was a sickening crack, and Andrei fell.

  Valeriya screamed.

  Fitz, standing in the doorway with the door half-closed, thumbed off the lock on the left side of his revolver’s barrel and aimed at Feodor; but the peasants crowded around his target. They began to kick and beat Andrei, who lay on the floor unconscious. Valeriya tried to get to him to help him, but she could not push through the crowd.

  A peasant with a scythe struck at the portrait of Bea’s ste
rn grandfather, slashing the canvas. One of the men fired a shotgun at the chandelier, which smashed into tinkling fragments. A set of drapes suddenly blazed up: someone must have put a torch to them.

  Fitz had been on the battlefield and had learned that gallantry had to be tempered with cool calculation. He knew that on his own he could not save Andrei from the mob. But he might be able to rescue Valeriya.

  He pocketed the gun.

  He stepped into the hall. All attention was on the supine prince. Valeriya stood at the edge of the throng, beating ineffectually on the shoulders of the peasants in front of her. Fitz grabbed her by the waist, lifted her, and carried her away, stepping back into the drawing room. His bad leg hurt like fire under the burden, but he gritted his teeth.

  “Let me go!” she screamed. “I must help Andrei!”

  “We can’t help Andrei!” Fitz said. He shifted his grip and slung his sister-in-law over his shoulder, easing the pressure on his leg. As he did so a bullet passed close enough for him to feel its wind. He glanced back and saw a grinning soldier in uniform aiming a pistol.

  He heard a second shot, and sensed an impact. He thought for a moment that he had been hit, but there was no pain, and he dashed for the communicating door that led to the dining room.

  He heard the soldier shout: “She’s getting away!”

  Fitz burst through the door as another bullet hit the woodwork. Ordinary soldiers were not trained with pistols and sometimes did not realize how much less accurate they were than rifles. Moving at a limping run, he went past the table elaborately laid with silver and crystal ready for four wealthy aristocrats to have dinner. Behind him he heard several pursuers. At the far end of the room a door led to the kitchen area. He passed into a narrow corridor and from there to the kitchen. A cook and several kitchen maids had stopped work and were standing around looking terrified.

  Fitz’s pursuers were too close behind him. As soon as they got a clear shot he would be killed. He had to do something to slow them down.

  He set Valeriya on her feet. She swayed, and he saw blood on her dress. She had been hit by a bullet, but she was alive and conscious. He sat her in a chair, then turned to the corridor. The grinning soldier was running toward him, firing wildly, followed by several more in single file in the narrow space. Behind them, in the dining room and drawing room, Fitz saw flames.

  He drew his Webley. It was a double-action gun so it did not need to be cocked. Shifting all his weight to his good leg, he aimed carefully at the belly of the soldier running at him. He squeezed the trigger, the gun banged, and the man fell on the stone floor in front of him. In the kitchen, Fitz heard women screaming in terror.

  Fitz immediately fired again at the next man, who also went down. He fired a third time at a third man, with the same result. The fourth man ducked back into the dining room.

  Fitz slammed the kitchen door. The pursuers would now hesitate, wondering how they could check whether he was lying in wait for them, and that might just give him the time he needed.

  He picked up Valeriya, who seemed to be losing consciousness. He had never been in the kitchens of this house, but he moved toward the back. Another corridor took him past storerooms and laundries. At last he opened a door that led to the outside.

  Stepping out, panting, his bad leg hurting like the very devil, he saw the carriage waiting, with Jenkins in the driver’s seat and Bea inside with Nina, who was sobbing uncontrollably. A frightened-looking stable boy was holding the horses.

  He manhandled the unconscious Valeriya into the carriage, climbed in after her, and shouted at Jenkins: “Go! Go!”

  Jenkins whipped the horses, the stable boy leaped out of the way, and the carriage moved off.

  Fitz said to Bea: “Are you all right?”

  “No, but I’m alive and unhurt. You . . . ?”

  “No damage. But I fear for your brother’s life.” In reality he was quite sure Andrei was dead by now, but he did not want to say that to her.

  Bea looked at the princess. “What happened?”

  “She must have been hit by a bullet.” Fitz looked more closely. Valeriya’s face was white and still. “Oh, dear God,” he said.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Bea said.

  “You must be brave.”

  “I will be brave.” Bea took her sister-in-law’s lifeless hand. “Poor Valeriya.”

  The carriage raced down the drive and past the small dowager house where Bea’s mother had lived after Bea’s father died. Fitz looked back at the big house. There was a small crowd of frustrated pursuers outside the kitchen door. One of them was aiming a rifle, and Fitz pushed Bea’s head down and ducked himself.

  When next he looked they were out of range. Peasants and the staff were pouring out of the house by all its doors. The windows were strangely bright, and Fitz realized that the place was on fire. As he looked, smoke drifted from the front door, and an orange flame licked up from an open window and set fire to the creeper growing up the wall.

  Then the carriage topped a rise and rattled downhill, and the old house disappeared from view.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  October and November 1917

  Walter said angrily: “Admiral von Holtzendorff promised us the British would starve in five months. That was nine months ago.”

  “He made a mistake,” said his father.

  Walter suppressed a scornful retort.

  They were in Otto’s room at the Foreign Office in Berlin. Otto sat in a carved chair behind a big desk. On the wall behind him hung a painting of Kaiser Wilhelm I, grandfather of the present monarch, being proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

  Walter was infuriated by his father’s half-baked excuses. “The admiral gave his word as an officer that no American would reach Europe,” he said. “Our intelligence is that fourteen thousand of them landed in France in June. So much for the word of an officer!”

  That stung Otto. “He did what he believed was best for his country,” he said irately. “What more can a man do?”

  Walter raised his voice. “You ask me what more a man can do? He can avoid making false promises. When he doesn’t know for sure, he can refrain from saying he knows for sure. He can tell the truth, or keep his stupid mouth shut.”

  “Von Holtzendorff gave the best advice he could.”

  The feebleness of these arguments maddened Walter. “Such humility would have been appropriate before the event. But there was none. You were there, at Castle Pless—you know what happened. Von Holtzendorff gave his word. He misled the kaiser. He brought the Americans into the war against us. A man could hardly serve his monarch worse!”

  “I suppose you want him to resign—but then who would take his place?”

  “Resign?” Walter was bursting with fury. “I want him to put the barrel of his revolver in his mouth and pull the trigger.”

  Otto looked severe. “That’s a wicked thing to say.”

  “His own death would be small retribution for all those who have died because of his smug foolishness.”

  “You youngsters have no common sense.”

  “You dare to talk to me about common sense? You and your generation took Germany into a war that has crippled us and killed millions—a war that, after three years, we still have not won.”

  Otto looked away. He could hardly deny that Germany had not yet won the war. The opposing sides were deadlocked in France. Unrestricted submarine warfare had failed to choke off supplies to the Allies. Meanwhile, the British naval blockade was slowly starving the German people. “We have to wait and see what happens in Petrograd,” said Otto. “If Russia drops out of the war, the balance will change.”

  “Exactly,” said Walter. “Everything now depends on the Bolsheviks.”

  { II }

  Early in October, Grigori and Katerina went to see the midwife.

  Grigori now spent most nights in the one-room apartment near the Putilov works. They no longer made love—she found it too uncomfortabl
e. Her belly was huge. The skin was as taut as a football, and her navel stuck out instead of in. Grigori had never been intimate with a pregnant woman, and he found it frightening as well as thrilling. He knew that everything was normal, but all the same he dreaded the thought of a baby’s head cruelly stretching the narrow passage he loved so much.

  They set out for the home of the midwife, Magda, the wife of Konstantin. Vladimir rode on Grigori’s shoulders. The boy was almost three, but Grigori still carried him without effort. His personality was emerging: in his childish way he was intelligent and earnest, more like Grigori than his charming, wayward father, Lev. A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

  General Kornilov’s counterrevolution had been crushed before it got started. The Railwaymen’s Union had made sure most of Kornilov’s troops got stuck in sidings miles from Petrograd. Those who came anywhere near the city were met by Bolsheviks who undermined them simply by telling them the truth, as Grigori had in the schoolyard. Soldiers then turned on officers who were in on the conspiracy and executed them. Kornilov himself was arrested and imprisoned.

  Grigori became known as the man who turned back Kornilov’s army. He protested that this was an exaggeration, but his modesty only increased his stature. He was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party.

  Trotsky got out of jail. The Bolsheviks won 51 percent of the vote in the Moscow city elections. Party membership reached 350,000.

  Grigori had an intoxicating feeling that anything could happen, including total disaster. Every day the revolution might be defeated. That was what he dreaded, for then his child would grow up in a Russia that was no better. Grigori thought of the milestones of his own childhood: the hanging of his father, the death of his mother outside the Winter Palace, the priest who took little Lev’s trousers down, the grinding work at the Putilov factory. He wanted a different life for his child.

  “Lenin is calling for an armed uprising,” he told Katerina as they walked to Magda’s place. Lenin had been in hiding outside the city, but he had been sending a constant stream of furious letters urging the party to action.